PPT - Pre-Planned Torture

We have all seen numerous presentations - loved a few but mostly suffered because of them. What is it about them that makes them so lovable as well as highly irritable? All of them are made on MS Powerpoint so lets not blame Bill Gates for this one.

There was time when these powerpoints had a point. Now whenever I see another ppt I literally go "WTF ! Not another retarded ppt. Please God. Please !" Most PPTs can serve their purpose by using just the handouts since the presenter is simple reading out from them. No added inputs from him. You sit there and wonder if you are in a nursery school and the teacher is reading out the lullaby to you.

Powerpoint has been given this cult status mainly by MBAs especially the ones plying their trade in the Consulting trade who live by the motto "If you cant convince them, bore them". They show all sorts of graphs, throw in all sorts of numbers/facts and excruciating details in the introduction which the audience doesnt care two hoots about. Why dont those morons get to the real part of analysis and the recommendations? 

Marketing guys are not far behind but better only because they are trying to con us and not bore us to death. Their idea of pain is making fancy names and terms for simple tasks. Pasting brand posters is called "Activation strategy". Profit making is called "Value Capturing". The list is endless.

All said and done you can put any presentation in the world under SmackD's 2x2 matrix of PPTs. 

There are two aspects to any presentation - Presenter and Content. A combination of both determines what we gain out of the PPT.

1. Cool Hand Luke (Good Presenter :: OK Content): The presenter would keep his audience engaged through jokes and some neat articulation. But at the end of the presentation you would heaping praises on the presenter but in reality you do not have much of a take-away because he/she just entertained.

2. Master Yoda (Bad Presenter :: Good Content): Totally opposite of the above. The Presenter in most cases would be outrightly boring but if we are able to look past that you would find that whatever he is presenting is really good and you walk out richer in terms of understanding/knowledge. If only he/she could articulate they would leave you with a positive after-taste.

3. Death Angel (Bad Presenter :: Bad Content): They are the ones chosen by the devil himself to deliver "Death by Powerpoint". Boring content. Lifeless speaker. You would prefer being flogged ass-naked in public than sit through a minute of such presentations. To make matters worse these presentations will be longer than any average presentation and the pace would be painstakingly slow.

4. RockStar (Good Presenter :: Good Content): These are the ones who make a powerpoint presentation orgasmic and leave you wanting more. They are clever, funny and articulate well. They keep it simple enough and the PPTs are usually written in spoken english as if every point was speaking to you.

So where do in SmackD's do you wanna be?

The Chronicles of Section B - Part Deux

Political Consulting

Little known Consulting firm McKinley was worried - Business was drying up, Clients were sinking, Employees were fleeing and their pirated MS Office just crashed. The Financial meltdown was taking its toll. So they decided to hire SmackD as a consultant to get them out of the mess (since he was the only one willing to work in exchange for food - all others wanted cash and to top that the first hour was FREE).

SmackD knew that he had to scan businesses and recommend one big ticket sector which had lots of untapped potential as well as was recession-proof. So thus began the research and he stumbled upon FMCG. Seemed decently recession-proof industry. Recession or no recession - people would still brush, shower, crap, drink and eat. So he decided to met some employees of a really big FMCG firm - Hagga UnLimited. He met two of their many stellar employees - Faffarsh and Gaydar Dede. It was an enlightening conversation. A small excerpt:

Faffarsh: We are mass-shitters i.e. we bullshit the masses. In fact we shit so much that every person joining our company gets diapers, so that we can keep shitting without worrying about the stains. As the economy moves forward and people have more disposable income, we see a clear trend of our CTC (Cost-to-Company) coming down. This is because people tend to downgrade as they get richer, so we'll have cheaper diapers with more shit-absorbents.

Gaydar Dede: The motto of my company is to "Dig a well by doing good". We try and make a difference to every Indian by helping them dispose whatever income they get. We make them pay Rs. 10 for something thats worth less than my teeny brain. In that way we drain their wealth, Do Well and ultimately force consumers to dig a well for themselves.

After the discussion SmackD knew that this industry was full of shit and unless McKinley wanted to go from the Frying pan to Shit-pot this was not a business they need to get their hands on.

Then like a true consultant he decide to break everything down to the last detail, use all the frameworks (even if he didnt understand a f*&k about it), look at the entire "value chain" and frame a 2x2 matrix. During this time a amazing insight hit him "Na biwi na bachha, na baap bada na bhaiyya .. the whole thing is that .... ke bhaiyya sabse bada Rupaiyya" (Money is bigger than anything)

One look at how money flows in different businesses and he quickly saw one common theme - Politicians. Pick any business, any scenario and you'll still see a 'cut' going to politicians. Now, thats a recession proof industry. So SmackD decided to recommend Political consulting to McKinley considering there were opportunities unbound in Politics to make tons of money (tax-free).

Some of the major opportunities he saw going forward are:

1. With demand for more and more states coming, McKinley can advise parties on how and when to enforce Bandhs, how many buses to vandalize to maximize impact, who should go on a fast and till when, plan demonstrations, decide on the exact price point to pay people to come and attend rallies with a view to maximize participation at minimum cost etc

2. With coalition politics only getting stronger, McKinley can advise people on which parties to align with, valuation of vote bank and possible synergies, which seats to share, how to position yourself strategically in a strong bargaining position, which parties to 'break' by offering attractive incentives to key leaders of the opposing party, how to keep your flock together when horse-trading rears its ugly head etc

3. McKinley can also advise parties on Capital raising strategies by enticing investments from Corporate India in Party funds and on how to maximize the same using value-based pricing, form a portfolio of companies which would be diversified in terms of risk of expose, form a BCG matrix to see which companies fell in which quadrant so as to make better policy decisions to attract more 'investments', how to structure deals, which companies to invest in (ranked on possibility of insider trading) etc

4. McKinley can also advise the ruling party on timing the market to announce next elections, make strategic announcements which will drive up stock prices in companies they have invested in, how to creatively report inflation and other macro-economic numbers, when to invoke Emergency / Article 365 / President's rule etc

5. Optimizing the election list by apportioning tickets subject to the constraints of castes, loyalty and money.

Similarly many more opportunities of this nature exists in politics which are very attractive. Currently no firms are present in this space and thus you can make a killing.